Church Sunday school magazine

Dangers and difficulties surround and beset us. Against the dangers of a political nature, older members of the Church have to contend, and all that we would exhort our younger friends to do is, to aid their elders by their prayers. But difficulties of a very serious nature attend the path of our younger brethren. Besides the difficulties from within, arising from the frailties of a fallen nature, "the infection of which doth remain, yea, even in them that are regenerated;" there are difficulties connected with the times in which we live, as those can bear witness who are employed in mills, or who serve in shops. The sophistry of the blasphemer is circulated in tracts, and propounded in conversation, and the youthful advocate of the truth has too often to undergo, in the taunts and scoffs of the careless and profane, a moral persecution, under which, not a few have been crushed and ruined. Both for warning and encouragment, we refer our young friends to Matt. x. 32, 33, Mark viii. 38, and Phil. iv. 13. Let these passages be frequently read with prayer; and it will be our endeavour to give knowledge, to instill sentiments of piety, and to assist all who apply to us with such counsel as they may require.

Above all, we shall endeavour to excite in every breast the devoted attachment we ourselves feel for the glorious institutions of our country, and for that Reformed Church, which gives to them solidity and life.

OUR Church, where English steeples rise,
Where English navies roam,

Sends bold Evangelists abroad,

Gives Pastors true at home:
And the open Book is in Her hand,
And to Her alone 'tis given

To brighten earth around our path,

While She guides our souls to heaven.

You may trace Her spirit in the looks
Of each English passer by,

In the manly step, and the hearty voice,
And the calm and dauntless eye;
In the speech of man and maiden,
In the face of age and youth,
You may read a people trained by Her
In the light of love and truth;

She bids Her wedded Pastors' homes
In every village rise;
Gladdened by children's guileless mirth,
And bright maternal eyes;

That so the rudest peasant,

In Her farthest vale may see How beautiful and blest a thing A Christian home may be.

She hath washed us from ancestral sin
In the Spirit-cleansing flood,

And She hath fed the life which then She gave

With the Saviour's Flesh and Blood;

She blesses still our marriage morn,

She soothes our dying bed;

She gives our body back to earth,

When the deathless soul hath fled.

God send Her swift deliverance

From the plagues which vex Her now; God heal the discord in Her heart,